Mayor Jennings follows an unfortunate tradition in leaving his successor with a fundamentally unbalanced budget.

THE STAKES:

Why not start the city on the difficult but necessary path toward long-term stability?

With no tax hike and no cuts in services, Mayor Jerry Jennings' last budget for the city of Albany may sound like good news. It isn't.

We understand the mayor's desire to leave office on a high note, and it's certainly appealing to not raise taxes or trim the services people have come to expect. But if Mr. Jennings wants to leave a more substantive fiscal legacy than yet another precariously balanced budget, it should be to put the city on a more solid financial course.

And there is still time for him and the Common Council to achieve that.

Mr. Jennings' budget fails to get to the heart of the problem that has dogged the mayor over his 20 years in office: Albany spends more than it takes in. In his own budget message this year, Mr. Jennings notes that when he took office he inherited a $10 million structural imbalance. If his 2014 proposal stands, he'll leave his successor with a nearly $10 million structural imbalance, too.

This is not to say that Mr. Jennings has spent the last 20 years doing nothing about the city's fiscal problems. The city has refinanced debt, put less costly health insurance plans in place, and consolidated departments. The mayor has lobbied the state tirelessly for a fairer deal on aid, noting that Albany receives less aid per capita than the state's other large cities.

Yes, in a fairer world, the state would give the city more, not with year-to-year "spin-ups" that borrow against the future, but on a more permanent basis. We agree with Mr. Jennings that New York does not take good enough care of its capital city.

But the reality is that there is no sign the state is going to change how it treats Albany any time soon. So the city has a choice — continue to keep its fingers crossed hoping for more aid that will stretch another year, or start taking an admittedly difficult path to a truly balanced budget.

In his final spending plan, Mr. Jennings could take at least a first step on that path with, say, a half-percent tax increase and a corresponding additional cut in spending. Such a modest increase would be well within the 2 percent state cap on tax levy hikes, but it would be a start toward closing that budget gap. The next mayor would, of course, need to continue that course.

Albany could gradually gain the true financial stability it needs without blowing a hole in its citizens' household budgets all at once. And if the state ever comes through with a fairer level of aid, nothing would prevent the city from cutting taxes.

We're well aware that Albany's property taxes are among the highest in the region, when the city's and school district's bills are combined. Yet Albany can neither wait for the state nor rely on its surplus much longer. Mr. Jennings' budget was balanced only by taking $9.8 million from Albany's reserves, leaving them at $8.4 million — not even enough to cover the gap he has left his successor.

Think of it this way, Mr. Jennings: It's not an election year for you, and it never will be again. For the sake of the city's future, you can afford to spend a little political capital.